by Tim Gilmore, 3/22/2019
In 1962, Mrs. Martha Miller of Yellow Pine Drive proposed planting a fence that grew itself, “a sort of natural barbed wire—the dildo, a sturdy tall-growing cactus which is chopped off at a joint and set into sandy soil.” Surrounding her seven year old suburban ranch-style house with a “living-fence” would further beautify the new neighborhood.
Julia Morton, of the University of Miami, who wrote the syndicated “Garden Clinic” newspaper column, admitted to admiring several dildos, including the “quick-stick,” the leguminous Gliricidia Sepium, finding it a most attractive “dildo,” with its “masses of pale-pink flowers in the spring,” but suspected it “too tender to grow as far north as Jacksonville.”
Oh the world is burning. It’s the end of days. Tides of blood rush down upon the earth from every direction on high. Our biggest fools lead us. Things fall apart. The horror, the horror.
So I’m on Green Palm Lane behind the Wash-O-Rama. Down Tall Pine Lane to Yellow Pine Court. Shaking hands with strangers like I’m running for office. It’s a thing I sometimes do. Incognito. “How do you feel about building the wall?” and “What’s your position on the dildo fence?”
Julia Morton offered Miller her opinions of “several different cacti referred to as ‘dildo’ in Florida,” such as Lemaireocereus Hystrix, an “erect, columnar” dildo much like Cereus Peruvianus, a dildo which “reaches the top of 2-story buildings” in South Florida.
Sadly, Morton warned “Mrs. Martha” that she would find these species of dildo “too tropical for your area.”
North of streets called Greenberry, Columbine and Blueberry, just east of Jacksonville University, I shake a few hands, and having just read Julia Frances Morton’s books Fruits of Warm Climates and Plants Poisonous to People in Florida and Other Warm Areas, I ask strangers what they think of dildos grandiflora.
A neighborhood billboard commands me, “Discover Why Jesus Created You!” and gives me an 855 phone number, but the recording that answers my call refuses to consider the issue.
Etymologists have connected the word “dildo” to English words like “diligence” and “diddle,” an embarrassing pairing, but also the 1590s Italian deletto from the Latin dilectio, “to delight.” In 1711, the unincorporated community of Dildo, Newfoundland, Canada named itself for an oar pivot shaped like a penis on a rowboat.
No dildo fences grow on Yellow Pine Drive today and what selection “Mrs. Martha” made is lost to the decades. Whether either Morton or Miller knew non-botanical meanings for the word seems doubtful.
from plantillustrations.org
Then again.
Reconsidered and amended.
Upon careful consideration, Morton recommended the Carissa Grandiflora, “an excellent, thorny” dildo, though she advised, “You could also make good use of the Siderocarpos Flexicaulis, the so-called Texas Ebony.”
